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Family held in canal deaths

MONTREAL–Police are investigating the death of three sisters found in their car at the bottom of the Rideau Canal in Kingston three weeks ago as a possible "honour" killing.

Three suspects arrested Wednesday in Montreal on their way to the airport, possibly to flee the country, are believed to the deceased sisters' father, Mohammed Shafi, his wife, and his 18-year-old son, the La Presse newspaper reported.

Mohammed Shafi and his wife speak to reporters at their home in Montreal about the loss of their children. (July 3, 2009) (Peter McCabe / The Canadian Press)

Kingston police have scheduled a news conference for 2 p.m. where Police Chief Stephen Tanner will outline the details of a major change in focus of the investigation. Up to now, police have only gone so far as to call the deaths "suspicious."

The Shafi sisters – Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17 and Geeti, 13 – died along with their aunt, Rona Amir Mohammed, on June 30. The family was returning from a trip to Niagara Falls and Toronto when they stopped for the night at a motel in Kingston.

The car was found that morning, submerged in the Rideau Canal, the bodies of the victims inside.

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Officially, Kingston police would only say yesterday there had been a "change in the status" of the investigation based on "what's happened in the last 24 hours."

"It was a suspicious death and that has been changed," said Kingston police spokesman Const. Mike Menor. "We're not saying what that is."

However, Kingston Police have been investigating for the last two weeks the allegation the deaths were an honour killing, police sources told the Kingston Whig Standard.

The family is Muslim and hails from Kabul, Afghanistan. They lived in Dubai for 15 years before arriving in Canada two years ago.

Kingston Police apparently received information that Rona Amir Mohammed is actually the first wife of Mohammed Shafi, that the couple had married in Kabul 30 years ago, and the marriage had been kept secret since their arrival in Canada.

The information came from Rona Amir Mohammed's sister, Diba Masoomi, who lives in France. Masoomi also sent along a photo, claiming it is of the of the couple at their wedding. "We are convinced that this is a crime of honour," Masoomi wrote in an email sent to the police chief's office roughly two weeks ago.

Masoomi said her sister feared for her life. "For some time, my sister, as well as the Shafi couple's oldest daughter, Zainab, had been receiving death threats for social, cultural and family reasons," she wrote.

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In the days following the deaths, Shafi, 57, told reporters the dthat Rona Amir Mohammed was his cousin, and she was always described as the children's aunt. Tooba Mohammad Yhaya, 37, introduced herself as Shafi's wife.

Family members speculated to reporters that one of the older sisters, likely Zainab, might have taken the car out to practise driving. They said she was rebellious and had taken the car in the past. However, the circumstances were always uncertain, particularly how the car made it all the way to the water.

The Shafis are not conservative Muslims, a Montreal relative of Yhaya, Said Fazel, told the Star.

The teenage girls dressed in a modern fashion, though reservedly, and did not even wear headscarves, said neighbour Joyce Gilbert, who lives below the family. She described them as "angels."

At the time, the couple shed tears in front of news cameras and Shafi said he hadn't slept or eaten for days and appeared grief-stricken as he flipped through a family photo album. He is a businessman dealing in electronics. A relative described him as "wealthy."

One relative said that during the funeral about a week after the incident, during which the father, Mohammed, was overcome and fell down. An ambulance was called, said Zarmina Fazel, a relative of Yhaya. "Mr. Shafi has lost his mind," Fazel said in a recent interview. "They are all in big shock. It's 24-hours-a-day sleeping. Nobody talks, like a coma."

There was also a Muslim prayer vigil for the dead women, attended by friends and relatives, which number about 30 in the Montreal area. That was the last time most relatives talked to the Shafi family.

Neighbours of the Shafi family in the Montreal borough of Saint-Léonard told the Star police were at the family's home last night for at least three hours. Other neighbours reportedly saw the parents' four other children taken away in an unmarked car.

Earlier this month, the supervising regional coroner, Dr. Roger Skinner, told the Star preliminary autopsy results were communicated to the family verbally. However, the family repeatedly denied having received any such results from the coroner.

Masoomi told the Kingston newspaper that Rona Amir Mohammed could not have children, and so Shafi took a second wife, a practice not uncommon in Afghani culture. Masoomi said her sister remained with the family and raised the children, even when they moved to Dubai.

After the incident, Shafi and his sons said the family was travelling in two cars and arrived in Kingston at 1:30 a.m. June 30. Shortly after, Zainab came to get the car keys from Yhaya, apparently to retrieve clothes from the car. At 7:30 a.m., Shafi woke up and looked out the motel window, and the car was gone, he explained. The police told him of the car's whereabouts later that morning.

The tragedy was puzzling for police. The car, a Nissan Sentra, would have had to traverse numerous obstacles, including a locked gate and stone moorings, to make it into the water. However, witnesses said there were no skid marks.

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